d or endangered liberty: by
the establishment of triennial parliaments, it can have no leisure
to acquire new powers, or guard itself, during any time, from the
inspection of that vigilant assembly: by the slender revenue of the
crown, no king can ever attain such influence as to procure a repeal
of these salutary statutes; and while the prince commands no military
force, he will in vain by violence attempt an infringement of laws so
clearly defined by means of late disputes, and so passionately cherished
by all his subjects. In this situation, surely the nation, governed by
so virtuous a monarch, may for the present remain in tranquillity, and
try whether it be not possible, by peaceful arts, to elude that danger
with which it is pretended its liberties are still threatened.

But though the royalists insisted on these plausible topics before the
commencement of war, they were obliged to own, that the progress of
civil commotions had somewhat abated the force and evidence of this
reasoning. If the power of the militia, said the opposite party, be
intrusted to the king, it would not now be difficult for him to abuse
that authority. By the rage of intestine discord, his partisans are
inflamed into an extreme hatred against their antagonists; and have
contracted, no doubt, some prejudices against popular privileges, which,
in their apprehension, have been the source of so much disorder. Were
the arms of the state, therefore, put entirely into such hands, what
public security, it may be demanded, can be given to liberty, or what
private security to those who, in opposition to the letter of the law,
have so generously ventured their lives in its defence? In compliance
with this apprehension, Charles offered that the arms of the state
should be intrusted, during three years, to twenty commissioners,
who should be named either by common agreement between him and the
parliament, or one half by him, the other by the parliament. And
after the expiration of that term, he insisted that his constitutional
authority over the militia should again return to him.[*]

The parliamentary commissioners at first demanded, that the power of
the sword should forever be intrusted to such persons as the parliament
alone should appoint:[**] but afterwards they relaxed so far as to
require that authority only for seven years; after which it was not to
return to the king but to be settled by bill, or by common agreement
between him and his parliam